ISTC-CMSA workshop Brief description of collections (~ 37milj objects ~ type specimens)  Recent zoological collections  Section Invertebrates  Section Entomology  Section Vertebrates  Paleontology  Antropology and Prehistory  Geology  Library

ISTC-CMSA workshop Brief description of collections – cont. A study independent consultancy agency (2002) Type1: books, periodicals and all other printed material ( books and other publications) Type 2: scientific archives Type 3: scientific data (non digitized) Type 4: scientific objects 3D (more than 35 identified collections) Type 5: scientific data (digitized)

ISTC-CMSA workshop View IT service Responsible ICT & MM Assist. ADM Support & helpdesk Development ICT & MM Project Management Responsible Network & Servers IT & AV Museum Helpdesk & support PC Technical responsible ICT developments (WEB, DB, etc.) MM developments (animation, graphical design, etc.)

ISTC-CMSA workshop Global IT +/- 500 user workstations (mainly desktops and laptops) +/- 20 servers (mainly linux+ some windows): Firewall, Mail, WEB, PDC, Databases, Backup, File Sharing, Security, Accounting,... Cisco switches Internet access 100 Mb's

ISTC-CMSA workshop Global IT – SLD The ICT & MM service :  Supports activities that require an enabling ICT environment (Science, museum and administration)  Regulates and maintains part of the ICT infrastucture which impacts the enterprise as a whole  Offers ‘core’ services that have an enterprise footprint, and/or that are delivered to the whole RBINS community and/or specific services that targets a defined subset of the RBINS staff

ISTC-CMSA workshop Collection management solutions Previously: Every section/department hosted their own system (paper, excel, access,...) Currently: The ICT & MM service uses as collection management tool for the recent zoology data.The system has been forseen to host geological data as well as paleontological data and can be extended to the field of botany, virology,....

ISTC-CMSA workshop Collection management solutions The information for the Antropology and prehistory department is stored in a separate in-house tool MARS, due to the very specific conservation needs in this field. The library catalogue is hosted in an external system that links up to 30 different organisations.

ISTC-CMSA workshop Main Issues faced – general points - ICT & MM does not have enough resources to support multiple databases in a multitude of different languages. (centralised system versus decentralised system)  Single public web access  Guarantee the perenniality of the data - Analysis proved that existing collection management systems did not fulfil the wishes of the in-house scientists (every curator has his/her own approach to the subject) - Finding the middle ground between the information required by the scientists and the information required for the curators

ISTC-CMSA workshop Main Issues faced – from COLMAT to DaRWIN - Expensive proprietary system versus open source solutions - Oracle interface tools are not userfriendly and customizable - The former system was not easily extendable - Not always easy to find the correct balance between required fields and optional additional information - An ideal database structure does not always correspond to the real everyday usage - The user needed a more flexible way of searching data - Implement the open source philosophy in DaRWIN

ISTC-CMSA workshop Future plan and expectations for the workgroup - Add the possibility of managing DNA and tissue collections - Add the functionality of exporting the data to International portals (e.g. GeoCASE and BioCase wrapper) - Extend the functionalities with e.g. a digitized loan module, multimedia module,....

ISTC-CMSA workshop Future plan and expectations for the workgroup - What are the experiences and problems of the group with regards to exchange standards (e.g. exporting data to portals such as Europeana?) - How does the group solve georeferencing issues (e.g. conversion of different ssystems UTM, DMS, etc.) - What are the experiences and problems of the group with regards to IT issues related to collection management (e.g. storage for imaging, faster query results, failover issues, replication, etc.)